


Night

by melannen



Series: Lots of Planets Have A South Downs [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Saga (Comics)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 19:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen





	Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



I was too little to remember much about our visit with Crowley and Zirah other than the sweets. They were little triangular cookies made of just-crisp-enough-dough wrapped around a dizzying variety of sweet fruit fillings. Zirah was telling the truth when he said he’d made far too many, because according to Izabel, I ate them steadily one after another the whole time we were there and didn’t make a dent in the pile. Even more miraculously, I didn’t make myself sick on them, either.

I don’t remember anything but the cookies, but Granny and Izabel used to talk about it a lot with each other. Granny showed up half an hour or so after we did, banging angrily on the door, leaning heavily on her cane and clutching my locator spell. Izabel thought she was going to drag us both, bodily or disem-bodily, back to the rocketship, but then she saw Zirah’s massive collection of Heist hardcovers and was talked into sitting down for tea and cookies.

Granny could talk about Heist for ages if you let her, and it turned out so could Zirah. After that long on the rocket with us, even Izabel could mostly keep up, until she let slip that we had a whole bunch of the author’s personal copies, annotated first printings saved from the fire, back on the rocketship. 

The expression Zirah got then was _scary_. Izabel tried to copy it for me once, but she said she couldn’t capture the true depth of avarice in his eyes. Crowley must have seen it too, because he changed the subject by starting up what sounded like a long-running and well-rehearsed argument over whether the cookies were better than pancakes or not.

“These are excellent,” Granny interrupted after they’d been at it for awhile. “I’ve never seen them before. What are they?”

“They’re a very old traditional holiday food,” Crowley told her, and grinned. “We used to call them _malamikoj ‘oreloj_ ,” and held one up next to her head on the side with the missing ear.

 _Malamikoj ‘oreloj_ means _enemies’ ears_ in Blue. Izabel said it wasn’t until then that she realized we’d all been speaking as if we were under a translator spell, even though both the rings were with my parents, and she couldn’t figure out if the language they’d been using before was Blue or Language. Granny said that was the first time she realized that even though they looked like it, they weren’t originally from Landfall or from Wreath. (Izabel and Granny could never agree on which of them looked like he was from Wreath, and which looked like he was from Landfall. Sometimes they switched sides without realizing. I was still too young to realize that was important enough to notice.)

“Crowley, stop trying to be scary,” Zirah said, and swatted him on the shoulder. “Today is a holiday of joy and celebration in the culture we originally came from,” he told Granny. “Normally we’d be out at a party or a play tonight, but this year it seemed wiser to stay in and celebrate at home. So it’s wonderful that we have guests after all.”

“Yes,” Granny said with a frown. “We stopped here because we thought it might be a safe place for our family to be at peace for a time, but from what Marko told me after they got to town, it sounds like things are changing.”

Crowley shook his head. “It’s the new governor Landfall sent,” he said. “He’s been stirring things up, trying to turn his people against the Wreath minority.”

“It wouldn’t be working if the people weren’t all ready to be stirred up,” Zirah said with a frown, and that had the feeling of long-rehearsed argument, too.

“Well, people have managed to live here for hundreds of years, and it’s never quite boiled over,” Crowley said. “We must have faith that it won’t boil over now, either. In the meantime, would Hazel like to hear a story?”

Hazel always wanted to hear a story.


End file.
